COVID-19

Despite the global Covid-19 pandemic and recession, corporate purchases of clean energy are booming. Several factors are driving this trend, including falling costs, a heightened appetite for sustainability among consumers and investors, and increased political will for net-zero development. In recognition of this, the UP Initiative spent Q3 2021 investigating sustainable electricity supply. How are PPA models evolving? What are the critical issues around residual energy? And how can greenwashing be avoided? Read on to discover more.

The Baltic state has offered energy-intensive, international-facing industries up to an 85% discount on a surcharge levied on electricity consumers since May 2017 and made the scheme wider ranging this year, in a move approved by the European Commission.

Advances in solar power and other clean energy technologies have failed to keep up with demand for electricity as economies rebound from the Covid crisis and China and India’s fossil fuel appetite will ensure the world stays well short of what is needed for a net zero 2050 for at least the next three years.

The European Union’s statistics body said three-quarters of the solar modules imported to the bloc last year came from China.

Solar manufacturer Jolywood, which supplied almost 500 MW of its bifacial tunnel oxide passivated contact panels for Oman’s Ibri II facility, has claimed the power plant is the biggest to date to deploy the high-efficiency technology.

The latest edition of a clean power jobs survey produced by IRENA and the International Labour Organization has stressed the important role which will need to be played by the public sector if the energy transition’s employment benefits are to be shared equally.

The latest edition of DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook report finds that, while there are plenty of encouraging forecasts for renewable energy, decarbonization ambitions laid out in the Paris agreements are unlikely to be met. The report finds that in most cases Covid-19 recovery policy has served to lock in emissions-intensive systems, and that urgent action is needed to push decarbonization in hard to electrify sectors such as shipping and heavy industry.

The Dutch event has attracted bumper crowds this week as the Dutch solar PV market continues to defy skeptics with its tremendous growth.

A note issued by Norwegian analyst Rystad has hinted it may be time to consider abandoning the 1.5-degree average global temperature rise ceiling agreed upon in Paris six years ago, because the world will never be able to pump out enough solar panels in time.

Some time ago, when I lived in the center of Berlin, I was a regular at the farmers’ market to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. One greengrocer advertised his wares with the words “cheap today, expensive tomorrow.” It would almost be desirable if we PV wholesalers could offer our modules with a similar slogan. Unfortunately, no one in the industry can currently claim that solar modules are cheap – quite the opposite. Following a brief respite, prices have climbed again in recent weeks. Since the previous low in September 2020, prices for new, grade-A goods have already risen by an average of 20% to a level not seen since April 2019.